Ride, walk, jog, or crawl along the Greenbelt through Boise and you're likely to pass Municipal Park in all its 28-acre glory. The park is a summer-time favorite with folks looking for a picnic site or a place to have a ginormous birthday party or family reunion (shudder and cringe).

Eleven of the park's picnic sites are reservable, most with tables and grill stands. Plus, they have groovy names such as "Silver Maple #1". Unforgettable, that. Some of the larger picnic sites have multiple tables, huge rock BBQ pits, and electrical outlets to hook up your mini fridge and boom box.

Back in the day, way back in the day, like 1910 to be exact, the Boise School District bought 25 acres of what's now Municipal Park, intending to put up a fancy baseball stadium. Today, Municipal has a crappy little grass softball area. How'd that happen you ask? Well, the school district was in charge of buying, building, and maintaining public playgrounds, which makes no sense at all no matter how you figure it, which goes to show that this town never did make sense.

Anyway, the usual politics ensued and instead of building a kick-ass stadium, the 25 acres of basic wilderness was named the Boise Tourist Park, and it opened officially in 1918. For those of you that aren't familiar with tourist campgrounds (as they're known today), they're basically KOA campgrounds without all the asphalt, 34-foot RVs, and geriatric smells.

Boise Tourist Park had all the latest bling that a campground could offer back in the day, like a communal washing machine and 2 concrete slabs where you and a pal could wash your cars. Being one of the only reasons to come to Boise before World War One, the campground quickly bloated with travelers to the tune of 6,000 people each summer. Sure, we get more folks than that in one day if something like the Tour de Fat is in town, but back then folks didn't drive long distances like we do today. Besides, we're talking about a time when Boise got buried under 20 feet of snow in the winter (on average) and the summers reminded folks that we really do live in a desert.

After the first "war to end all wars", people got all excited and the folk who had gone overseas and saw a bit of the world brought travelling fever back with them. Soon Boise was getting swarmed with visitors. The park's numbers shot up from 6,000 peeps a year to over 20,000 car loads a year. As with anything good or successful, the folks in charge at the time had no idea what to do with a hit and couldn't keep up with the maintenance all those visitors required. A few years later, in 1927, Municipal Park came into being as the City of Boise purchased the parcel and promptly renamed it. I mean, what else were they going to do with it? Renaming things is a politician's third hobby, right behind lying and cheating.

Once under the City's staunch control, all those unruly visitors packed up and left, leaving room for the army of hobos that claimed the park for their own. Ever hear the term "hobo jungle"? That's what it became. For eleven years the City's beat cops turned out beggars, hobos, and vagrants to prove to the townsfolk that they were earning their pay. In 1938 the City officially closed the park, which was beginning to look like our own special shanty town, and they came up with the idea of "general use" parks, which means the park is open to everyone from sunrise to sunset, including hobos, and all the City has to do is mow the lawn once a week. Obviously, the park was then reopened. Signs along the Greenbelt testify to the park's interesting history. So go enjoy this park all you want to, just don't pitch a tent and start singing capfire songs. We're civilized now.